


Let our shadows fall away like dust

by aerynevenstar



Category: Falling Skies
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Author cannot stick to one tense, Denial of Feelings, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, John Pope is a hot mess, M/M, Magical Realism, Mildly Dubious Consent, Pope is also slightly nicer this time around, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, what are tenses
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-03
Updated: 2017-06-08
Packaged: 2018-11-08 15:41:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11084703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aerynevenstar/pseuds/aerynevenstar
Summary: Swallowing the knot that had formed deep in his throat, Tom slowly released his arm and craned the hand back up over his shoulder, causing his left elbow to rise closer to his face. With a last lingering glance at Anne, he reluctantly dragged his eyes away from her trembling mouth and gradually focused upon the flexor muscle of his forearm.A low, mangled sound of horror escaped his lips.Where there had once been soft, looping letters spelling out Rebecca's name in desolate grey, there were now two words in a sharp, angry handwriting, blacker than the night sky.John Pope.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Why the fuck are there only 4 Tom/Pope fics on the internet?
> 
>  
> 
> _This is not acceptable._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter takes place sometime between 02x11 and 03x01. Anne is seven months pregnant.

History was one of the first things Tom had ever loved. In many ways, it was probably the first thing he'd ever held any true fondness or affection for in his heart, what with his mother dead before his formative years and his alcoholic, miserable excuse of a father doing everything possible to drive all softness out of him.

Back then, the public library had been his greatest refuge, an escape from the house he was forced to return to at the end of every school day, waiting for the return of his old man in the late hours of the night and nervously anticipating either a drunken stupor or a towering rage. History had given him a world to escape to, chronicling the lives of men and women who'd gone through equally rough beginnings (or worse) and come out the other side stronger, resilient and unrelenting in the pursuit of their own justice. Thick volumes with dusty pages that crackled satisfyingly under his thin fingers, painting the struggles of humanity and the recurring stumbling blocks of their race; how could he not be drawn to them, to their stories of tragedy and triumph in equal measure? He soaked up facts and dates and names like a sponge, memorized quotes and speeches; gravitated toward the stories of rebellion and revolution like a moth to the flame, yearning to seize the reigns of his own life and wrest control from the overbearing, cruel man he was resignedly stuck with until adulthood.

Tom had become very adept at lying during his childhood; necessity driving him to adapt and learn the art of misdirection and manipulation after a single, disastrous visit from social services. The marks from that day would likely never fade, and neither would the lesson that some things were best left unsaid.

He was so skilled, in fact, he even managed to convince himself that rebellion was the only driving force behind his ardent obsession with history - rather than a desperate, clawing yearning to understand the promise of undying love lingering in every stroke of the name on the underside of his forearm.

* * *

History was never quite clear on the origin of the soulnames. No matter how deeply scholars dug, no one could ever pinpoint the exact moment that humanity developed such a puzzling phenomenon. Religions fumbled to explain it as a gift of their gods, the promise of one person that would always be your exact, perfect match, but could never fully reason away the fact that some names changed after their bearer was irrevocably altered by tragedy or war. Evolutionists claimed that the names were an example of humanity adapting itself to encourage survival with the promise of a lifelong, mated pair, then struggled to come up with an explanation for why some humans never developed a soulname at all, or had more than one at the same time.

Tom mourned the lack of information sometimes, but even in his most desperate moments of sorrow or loneliness, he could never bring himself to regret or resent the curling, artistic lines that formed the word _Rebecca_ on his skin.

Even when the letters turned to a soft, muted grey after the invasion, the color of ash and crumbling concrete in the wake of a ruined world.

The soulnames worked like this:

They could appear on a child's body as early as age 5, though that was exceedingly rare since most people changed drastically during their formative years and often did not settle into a steady representation of their core personality until the latter half of childhood. Once a name appeared, it did not usually change unless the owner or their soulmate were fundamentally altered by a massive tragedy or upheaval of their lives. It was possible to have a name that was only one word (usually the person's first name), or it could be their entire name spelled out with whatever language they were born into.

The names could appear on any part of the human body, though most tended to be in easily visible spots where the owner could see it with their own eyes. Multiple studies revealed the existence of obscure soulname locations in a small, rare percentage of humanity, where the name appeared on the bottom of a toe, inside the crease of an underarm, curling behind a person's ear under their hairline, or some other strange, unusual place - but no scientist was ever able to define _why_ exactly the names manifested this way in such a small part of the population. Rumors and superstitions spread across the internet, of course, but none had ever been able to pin down a true, definable reason.

One thing the names had in common across nationalities was the color - always black, provided your other half was still alive. If the bearer of your soulname was deceased, however, the name on your body would fade to a sad, muted grey, representing the loss of life in a brutally visible way.

After the Espheni invasion, there were a lot of people with grey names.

* * *

Tom had never put much thought behind the possibility of his soulname changing. Rebecca's name had appeared on his arm when he was 10 years old, and remained there for the next few decades. When she was alive, Rebecca had delighted in trailing her fingers lightly down the elegant black letters, sending a shiver of pleasant warmth down his spine and drawing an immediate smile from his lips. Likewise, he had never tired of brushing a gentle kiss against his own name, hidden on the soft skin above her navel, while she giggled and trailed a hand through his hair. It was one of his most deeply treasured memories of their marriage, long after he had moved on and found a haven with the 2nd Massachusetts and Anne Glass in the leftover ruins of their desolate world.

So when he woke up and felt fingers tracing slowly in a circle around his soulname, carefully avoiding touching the actual letters, he reeled in confusion at the sight of Anne's face hovering above his arm. Caught for a long moment between the dichotomy of sleep-tinged memories and the quiet reality of the pregnant woman at his side, he blinked up at her until his brain came back online and then reached out with his other hand to gently encircle her wrist.

"What's wrong?" he murmured gruffly, his voice a rasp as he struggled to fully wake up.

The woman stared at his arm in silence as though she hadn't heard a single word out of his mouth, an odd mixture of disbelief and resigned sorrow in her eyes as she chewed absently on her bottom lip.

"Anne...?"

Finally, she blinked and met his eyes with a strange frown curling the sides of her mouth. "Tom........you..."

"...what is it?" he prompted softly, alarm rising in his throat as she continued looking at him as though an eyebug had crawled out of his face in his sleep. For a long, terrified moment, he honestly considered the possibility.

"Your, um..." she licked her lips and then swallowed, dark eyes falling back to his arm. "Your name changed."

Tom gazed at her for several breathless heartbeats, uncomprehending. Then, he grinned widely at her in surprise, chest aching with fresh joy and loss. He had never entertained the thought that his fated partner could change, but it had been a long year since the invasion and Rebecca's death, filled with enough tragedy and violence to fundamentally alter anyone's personality. He didn't feel as though he had truly given up on his love for the beautiful woman he'd shared so much of his life with, but if his name had changed, then surely that meant-

"It's not me, Tom."

The grin slid off his face abruptly. "...what?"

He sat up quickly, ignoring the sheet that slid off his bare chest to pool in his lap as Tom clasped his forearm, hiding the new name behind his right hand. Anne drew back to the other edge of the bed, taking in the shock on his face with a pained grimace as she pulled the sheets up around her like a makeshift barrier.

"I...I think you should take a look," she said softly. Tom wasn't sure why she kept looking at him with such an odd expression, but the sad pity in her dark eyes was sending adrenaline and fear along his spine like the seeking tentacles of a harness.

Swallowing the knot that had formed deep in his throat, Tom slowly released his arm and craned the hand back up over his shoulder, causing his left elbow to rise closer to his face. With a last lingering glance at Anne, he reluctantly dragged his eyes away from her trembling mouth and gradually focused upon the flexor muscle of his forearm.

A low, mangled sound of horror escaped his lips.

Where there had once been soft, looping letters spelling out Rebecca's name in desolate grey, there were now two words in a sharp, angry handwriting, blacker than the night sky.

_**John Pope.** _

"No." Tom choked on the word as it left his mouth, throat and eyes burning more fiercely with every passing second as he stared at the name inked on his skin. "No. Th- that's not...possible."

He tore his eyes away from the frightening, solid black of the new name on his arm, frantically seeking out the comfort of Anne's gaze as his hands began to shake. "God...Anne, I- this doesn't change anything. I still love you, we can still make this work-"

"Tom!" She cut off his terrified babbling sharply, then paused and gentled her expression at his obvious distress. "I...I'm sorry. I love you too, but I... I can't stay in this relationship while you have... _that_."

"Anne..." the word fell from his lips like a sob, desperation and regret mangling the sound of his voice. "Don't-"

"I'm sorry," she whispered, her face crumpling. She slid off the bed and began to hurriedly collect her discarded clothes from the floor, nearly ripping them in her haste to get dressed. "I, I can't - I can't do this."

"Anne, we're having a _baby_ ," he rasped, reaching out for her hand instinctively. She recoiled from him immediately, staring at his arm with wide eyes; belatedly, he realized he'd used his left hand without considering the black letters etched newly upon the skin of his forearm. He jerked it back, curling it into his chest as though he could somehow hide the words from her forever.

Anne's mouth trembled at the reminder of the life growing inside her, then she pressed her lips together in a tight line that curved down at the corners and blinked back the tears glistening on her eyelashes. "I know. But...I just...I need _time_ , Tom."

She left without another word, closing the door behind her quietly.

The click of the latch sounded more loud and final in the silence than a gunshot.

In the wake of her absence, Tom curled over his left arm with a gasp, digging his nails into the skin until the letters bled.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And now we go back in time to see Pope's side of things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for some trigger-y things, like homophobia, homophobic slurs, child abuse, domestic abuse, etc. Pope's life isn't a happy fluffy thing, after all.
> 
> Also, I gave up on sticking to one tense in this chapter. Pope refuses to fucking conform.

John Pope had always hated soulnames.

Everyone seemed to think they were so wonderful - a gift from the universe that promised you would find someone to complete you in every way, like some sort of fucking Hollywood rom-com. He knew better. He'd seen them for what they truly were, long before he ever manifested his own.

A  _weapon_.

His father and mother were a named pair, but that sure as hell didn't guarantee their happiness. His bastard old man had always used the name on his mother's shoulder as a punishment, digging his nails into the skin with cruel ferocity whenever she pissed him off, eliciting a loud whimpering cry from her as if the tips of his fingers were serrated knives. She'd fled before he reached his teenage years, and good riddance to her. Not that the woman his old man had replaced her with was any better; both her and his little brother were fucking nuts. Not enough brain cells between them to fill a gas tank, and morals more filthy than the homeless people his father liked to throw rocks at for fun.

He'd seen girls offer themselves to guys with their name on their bodies, only to recoil in horror as a single touch made it evident they hadn't found the right person after all; never stopped the guys from taking advantage, of course. It was well known that anyone else's touch on your soulname could induce immediate nausea and a phantom sense of pain; what most of society neglected to realize or teach the next generation was that the owner of your soulname could just as easily cause even greater pain with a malevolent touch to that same spot. As far as he was concerned, the names were a cruel joke upon mankind; just one more cosmic hiccup of karma for all the shit people could do to each other.

John had fiercely hoped that he would never develop a soulname in his lifetime, smirking in vicious triumph when he managed to go through his early teens without evidence of any black marks on his skin.

The day he turned 15, however, his father had gifted him with the dubious birthday present of a beer bottle smashed over the back of his neck. Agony lanced through him as sharp as a machete, and he hit the ground hard. It had taken several long moments of curling in a ball on the floor, disoriented and reeling with the white-hot pain lancing through his veins, before he realized his father was screaming some nonsense about one of his sons "bein' a fuckin' fudge-packer!"

After his father had finally tired of snarling, kicking, and throwing shit at him, his brother had quietly fallen to the floor next to him, one hand hovering above his bloodied shirt. "Bad or wicked bad, bro?"

"...wicked," he had managed to gasp, choking on agony far greater than a single glass injury had any right to be. (It wasn't his first experience, after all; both he and his brother were well acquainted with various levels of pain. Good ol' daddy was a very thorough man.)

Billy had carefully dragged him to his room and removed the glass shards embedded into his skin in silence, every touch of his fingers sending a fresh wave of revulsion and white-hot anguish down his spine. After all the pieces were gone and the blood mopped up with one of his shirts, his brother had paused in the process of applying a bandage, long enough to spark alarm in his half-coherent awareness of the room.

"What?" he croaked, reaching around with one hand to gently prod the unbroken skin on the side of his neck, just outside the edge of the flames licking up his vertebrae.

Billy had stared for another few heartbeats, and then quietly informed him of his death sentence.

"It's uh...it's your name, buddy. Ya got one o' those soulname things - right here."

"..... _fuck_."

* * *

After that day, John was careful to wear anything capable of covering the black lines on the nape of his neck, especially around his jackass father. He grew his hair long enough to cover the name without needing to resort to bandages or coats with tall collars, and then went a step further and covered his upper body in tattoos - if no one knew where to look to find that accursed ink on his skin, he figured, then they would spend too much time distracted by his surplus of non-incriminating black lines to ever be able to find the real one. He learned to be even more wary of his irascible old man and quickly developed a playboy reputation, throwing his virginity at the first girl who'd seemed interested and bringing home any others who looked at him long enough, until his father finally stopped trying to hit him on sight. And, most importantly, he spent every moment of free time building muscle, training himself to roll with punches to minimize injury, learning how to be resourceful.

Learning to survive.

He never spared a single thought to finding the man whose name he bore on the nape of his neck underneath the hair that brushed his shoulder-blades.

He'd seen the plague that soulnames could become. Countless innocent people, trained from infancy to believe and hope in the promise of those tiny black lines, ravaged with grief when they found the "right" person and saw the evidence of a name that wasn't their own etched on the body that was supposed to belong to them. He'd watched as people with names in other languages were savaged in alleyways by racist punks, and turned to walk the other way instead of helping, grimly pleased that his own controversial one was so easily concealed with the simple inconvenience of avoiding a haircut. He'd seen named pairs more vicious with each other than a pack of starving lions.

No. As far as he was concerned, _Tom Mason_ could fucking rot.

* * *

And so, he survived. Adapted. Improvised.

Found himself a woman that could stand him for longer than a week; a saucy brunette with eyes that could spit fire, a mean right hook, and a resolve of fucking granite. She was stubborn as a nest of hornets, fiercely devoted to their children, and a survivor like him; grew up with a name that turned grey only days after it had first manifested, and god-fucking-speed to anyone foolish enough to pity her for it. She was a fierce little thing, not afraid to get in his face and state her mind, and the make-up sex was incredible. He flatly refused to be like his father in this, and so he never laid a hand on her with any sort of anger or cruelty, no matter how vicious their arguments became.

His children were...fuck, they were amazing. He didn't really know how to be a father, but he sure as hell knew what _not_ to do, so it was fairly easy to answer any internal parenting questions with a quick thought to what his old man would have done - and then do the exact opposite. The homebody life was - odd, to be sure, leaving him with a pervading sense of restlessness he did his best to ignore, but at least he had achieved some measure of contentment.

(And if he sometimes spared a thought for the man whose name he bore, hidden carefully under long wavy hair, well. The less said about that, the better.)

When the stupid fucker who'd almost killed his son decided to make a wisecrack about his hair, though - the one defense John had against that revolting skin disease he refused to allow control over his life - he wasn't upset. He wasn't even really angry.

He was fucking _territorial_.

A dark wave of possessiveness clawed up his throat as the man gestured toward his hair, hand coming far too damn close to his neck than anyone was allowed to, and his gut tightened with a snarl of _mine, minemineminemi-_

His fist had lashed out without a single thought for the consequences. Hell, it was just a punch, right? Not like he wanted to kill the guy.

Except. That's exactly what he did.

* * *

Prison was easy.

Prison made sense, in a way that his peaceful family life never had.

Then the aliens invaded.

It was probably the best thing that had ever happened to him, really. Or that was what he used to comfort himself, when he spared a thought to worry over the fate of his children. (Most days he hoped they were dead; better that than a mindslave to those fucking spiders.) It was somewhat of an odd, miraculous coincidence that he managed to find his brother in the wake of the apocalypse after escaping the correctional center he'd been interned in, but having a loyal, trigger-happy follower ready and waiting to slaughter any aliens that crossed their path wasn't anything to sneer at. They even picked up a few other guys along the way. Not the most intelligent bunch, and one or two of them probably should have stayed in prison for the sake of the remaining dregs of humanity, but they obeyed his orders and they worked well together, so Pope didn't bother with an inspection of the horse's mouth and just rolled with his good fortune and the exhilaration of freedom.

And then they found Maggie.

He'd discovered a few hidden truths about which side of the fence he genuinely preferred to lean on in prison, so his motivation for offering an actual roof, good food, and safety in numbers had been a simple and genuine thing. No sense in damaging or running off a spirited fighter ready and willing to add one more point to humanity's column in this shitshow of a war. His boys, however...they didn't exactly feel the same. As far as most of them were concerned, they had free fucking reign of this part of the city and anything or anyone in it, and woe befall any living creature who challenged that - human or alien bedamned. Leaving the poor, half-starved thing to his gang wasn't a good option, but losing the loyalty and tenuous respect of his volatile fighters was not an option at all in these dangerous last days of mankind.

So, despite the acrid taste it left in his mouth, he turned a blind eye to her wide, desperate gaze as his brother loomed over her in their main living area, purring soft lies promising comfort she very obviously had no desire for. Billy was clearly far stupider (or far more disgusting) than he had ever given the guy credit for, if he was that blind to the revulsion in her sparking eyes and the downturned corner of her lips. He moved to turn away, cultivating a vague desire to find some corner of their hideout that would be as far out of earshot as he could possibly find, when his brother snagged a finger in the neckline of her shirt and suggestively dragged it down; out of the corner of his eye, Pope caught a word that was more recognizable to him than his own mother's face, and stopped dead.

He was moving before his thoughts could catch up with him, snatching Billy's wrist in a hard grip and wrenching it away from her cleavage as though the revealed skin had been covered in alien guts. All activity in the room stopped as eyes came to rest upon the line of his tense shoulders, and Pope could _feel_ Cueball's resentful, calculating glare like a tangible noose around his neck.

"Hey," he murmured softly with a deceptive calm that he in no way actually felt, sliding his gaze to focus upon the outrage twisting his brother's features. "Finders keepers, bro. I'm the one who found her; I got first dibs."

The tentative hope in the blonde's eyes died a swift, brutal death, and she sagged against the wall behind her with a quiet noise of resignation. His brother wasn't happy about it, but a murmured reminder of his stint in prison and a (hilariously exaggerated) lie about not getting laid in those five years quickly put his complaints to rest. Activity in the room restarted with a casual dismissal of the fading tension as his little band of distinctly _un_ -merry men went about their business, and a tight grip on Maggie's arm silenced her hissed protests as he dragged her off to the dubious safety of a room with a deadbolt.

Pope sized her up for a long stretch of silence after the door was closed and locked behind them, the cautious blonde doing the same to him. He still held his gun loosely in one fist, and he used it to gesture her towards the bed. Her throat bobbed with a reflexive swallow, eyes flashing with brief viciousness, but then the fight drained out of her gaze and she quietly climbed onto the mattress.

With a quick nod to her breasts, he ordered: "Show me."

Mechanically, she clasped the hem of her shirt and began to drag it up her torso.

"Not that."

Maggie froze, confusion glinting in her dull, resigned eyes as they flicked up to meet his own.

"...your name," he clarified, tightly. His teeth were beginning to ache from clenching his jaw shut in mingled anticipation and dread.

Was that hope in her eyes? Fuck, he hadn't meant to imply that he was her match, he just- his thoughts were a jumbled, tangled mess, tripping over the barest flash of the name he thought he'd seen. Honestly, he had no idea what the fuck he was doing; he hadn't wanted to rock the precarious boat of loyalty that barely held this group of men together, and he sure as hell had no intentions of raping this young woman. How the shit was he going to explain this away or keep the fragile peace when-

His breath caught as her fingers finally yanked the neckline of her grimy shirt down, revealing pale skin emblazoned with the midnight slash of a name.

_Hal Mason._

Well, shit.

Pope wasn't quite sure how he felt about this revelation. What were the odds of coming across someone in the same area, with the same last name as the guy he'd grown up with stamped across his neck like a collar? She couldn't possibly be older than 25, so was she destined for an older man? Tom's brother, perhaps? Or....fuck, the guy's _son_? They had to be related; it was too fucking much of a coincidence that their names bore the same surname, in the same state, after the majority of humanity was lost. Both of their names were black (he knew, he'd checked the back of his neck as soon as they'd found this place, cautiously using the double reflection of a mirror and his ever-present switchblade), meaning the two of them had somehow survived and were holed up in a shelter somewhere - they _had_ to be family. There was no other explanation.

"-your name?"

What? Oh, the girl was trying to talk to him. Earth to fucking Pope.

"What?" he croaked through numb lips, staring unblinking at the _Mason_ printed across the top of her left breast. Over the heart, too, how fucking sweet.

"Um...I said, what's your name?"

He replied on autopilot, still focused upon the words in front of his eyes and tumbling amidst thoughts of fate and karma and irony. "John Pope."

Maggie's face scrunched in bewildered confusion. "...I...I don't understand. If- if that's your name, then why did you...?"

She trailed off as he abruptly turned away from her, bracing the hand holding his gun against the sturdy wood of his bedroom door. Was he really going to do this?

...ah, fuck it. Why the hell not?

With his free hand, Pope slowly straightened and reached behind his head. Gathering the long strands in fingers that trembled with the weight of the secret he'd kept hidden for decades, he pulled all of his hair to one side and bared the black letters of the name he'd committed to memory so long ago.

Behind him, a sharp inhale signaled that Maggie had caught sight of the brand across his skin. He held his hair back for a few moments longer, then numbly let go and turned to face her reaction.

Her face was bloodless, stark white in her shock.

"What the actual fuck."

Well. Perhaps they'd get along after all.


	3. Chapter 3

Anne hasn't spoken to him in two weeks.

Tom throws himself into his work, as is his usual tendency when overwhelmed by stress or emotion he doesn't know how to deal with, but even the ever-present duties of being the President of the New United States aren't consuming enough to fully distract his mind. He's always been prone to thinking way too damn much, and it is both his greatest strength and also his most recurrent downfall.

In this case, it is an incredible distraction of monumental proportions.

He keeps catching himself looking in the direction of Popetown when he is out and about in the city, focusing on the Berserkers' corner of the room a little too long whenever they have strategy meetings or mission debriefs, surreptitiously glancing at wavy brown hair and a scruffy smirk out of the corner of his eye without ever actually looking John Pope fully in the face. No one has called him on it yet, but he's seen Dan casting a suspicious eye at the middle distance between Pope and himself, at the strange amalgamation of attention and disinterest Tom is suddenly aiming towards their resident bar owner and rabble-rouser. Pope seems to have noticed his odd behavior too, if the increase in animosity and snide comments is any judge of the man's opinion regarding his skittish avoidance.

Tom is trying to keep his mind fully on his duties, he really is, but- he just can't seem to stop _thinking_. Every previous interaction he has had with Pope is spiraling in a loop at the forefront of his mind throughout the day. He can't seem to stop looking at the memories and wondering; _why?_ Why in the name of everything holy has his soulname changed so suddenly, and for  _that man_ , of all people? Never before has he met someone who could rile him up so easily, who could dig past all of his rock-solid composure and effortlessly shred right through as if it wasn't even there. Pope has never been afraid to push him, to challenge his bluffs, and is usually the first person to question his decisions and plans, as if he were born on this planet for the sole purpose of calling Tom out on all his bullshit. He can't stop going over their conversations in his head; every sneered insult, every punch and shove, each time the man vaulted into his personal space with eyes like gunfire and grin like the snarl of a feral dog, clawing at the chance to get under his skin in any possible way.

He doesn't understand. With Rebecca, it had been so easy; they'd crossed paths on a normal day, just going about their business, and a casual brush of her arm against his own had sent liquid joy pouring into his veins. They had stopped dead in the center of the sidewalk, staring into each others' eyes like they'd finally come home. There hadn't even been a question about the rightness of it, the surety that resonated deep in their bones slaughtering any possible doubt as they moved in together while attending grad school. Their love had been as natural and inescapable as breathing.

But _this_?

Tom cannot imagine it. He can't even begin to fathom a world where he and John Pope could look at each other without the fire of animosity and challenge between them; two men so vastly different from each other that their meeting could have only ever ended in explosions and bullets. He keeps trying to frame his memories with Rebecca into a new shape, attempting to fit Pope into the concept of soulmate and all that the word has ever meant to him; he tries to imagine the two of them smiling at each other, reaching out with love and joy in their eyes, talking softly in the middle of the night with nothing but gentle, quiet affection between them.

He never succeeds. Every attempt of his mind to fit Pope into anything other than a ticking time bomb of rage that snarls in Tom's face and shoves him away just doesn't last beyond a single heartbeat. He cannot fathom the man ever being soft, not for anyone.

Least of all him.

* * *

The boys corner him midway through the third week.

"Dad?" a soft voice hails his attention from the door to his office. He's been staring at the papers on his desk without actually seeing them for the last twenty minutes, so the distraction is a very welcome one.

Tom looks up from the paperwork and meets the eyes of his youngest son. A smile instantly cracks the corners of his mouth, taking over the frown that seems to have become permanently etched there over the last few weeks.

"Matt, hey! Come on in."

His son smiles tentatively at him and sidles in to the room. He doesn't shut the door behind him though, instead holding it open as the rest of his children enter as well. Ben smiles at him sheepishly, but Hal's dark eyes are glittering with a furious resolve.

He knows exactly what this is about.

"What's up?" he asks anyway, giving his boys the perfect lead-in to ask the question he's seen on their faces ever since Anne left his room on an apparently permanent basis, despite their baby that is very nearly due to be born.

Ben and Matt fidget in the wake of the opening he's given them, but his eldest son decides to broach the topic with all the grace of a wrecking ball.

"What is going on with you and Anne?" bursts out of Hal in a belligerent tone, already defensive as if he is expecting their father to not give a straight answer. It's an unfortunately fair assumption, ever since his position and the hints of an Espheni mole required him to start lying to literally everyone, including (and maybe especially) his family.

Tom sighs heavily and relaxes into the back of his chair, casting an eye over his sons. Hal is several heads shorter than he should be, still attempting to adapt to the necessity of a wheelchair. Not for the first time, he wishes he'd put a bullet into Karen's skull.

"Do you boys remember when Rebecca and I explained soulnames to you?"

Both Hal and Matt appear to be rather thrown by his apparent non sequitur, but Ben has stiffened abruptly and is now peering sharply at him with an alarmed, calculating gaze. His middle child has always been a bright boy, so similar to himself at that age that sometimes it makes his heart ache, but right now he sort of wishes that Ben wasn't so keenly intelligent.

He isn't ready to admit this.

(He's not sure he'll ever be ready to admit that a man like _Pope_ could be perfect for him in any way.)

"Yeah..." Hal answers slowly, squinting at him in cautious anticipation. "But what does that have to do with...?"

"Mine changed almost three weeks ago."

All three of his boys stare at him with a mixture of surprise and betrayal.

Hal scowls at him darkly with a low mutter. "...and you're only just now telling us, of-fucking-course."

"W-wait..." Matt pipes up before Tom can scold his eldest's language, his eyes alight with curiosity. "You had Mom's name until then, right?"

At his quick nod, Matt chews on his bottom lip thoughtfully. "So...Anne is upset it wasn't her?"

"It's not Anne?" Hal blurts, bewildered. He sounds more rocked by this concept than even Tom had been, on that horrible morning he's been refusing to think about with varying levels of success.

"No, it's not Anne." Tom grimaces, ignoring the pang of regret these words bring him to say out loud, making them a reality he can't continue to hide from. "She doesn't want to continue our relationship now that I have a... _living_ soulmate. Here...in Charleston."

Ben is still staring at him, his eyes widening in shock far greater than this statement should be causing; in fact, he's looking at Tom like his father has just flung his clothes off and run around the room screaming. The color is slowly draining out of his face.

Ah. Well...Ben has always been perceptive. With the spikes on his back adding speed, stamina, and heightened senses to his already frighteningly accurate insight, Tom really shouldn't be surprised that Ben has already mostly figured it out.

He meets the eyes of his teenage son steadily, daring him to reveal the conclusion he's drawn, even as he is actively praying that the words never come.

"Who is it?" Ben asks instead, startling his brothers into abrupt silence. Tom hadn't been paying attention to the words of his other children, caught in the realization of his carefully constructed reality shattering down around him as one more person learned his newest secret.

Tom breaks contact with the blue eyes staring accusingly at him, challenging him to face the truth he is running from.

"I...would rather not say," he admits quietly, hating himself for his own cowardice.

He doesn't look up to face his sons' reactions, but the tense silence in the room speaks loudly enough for them.

After a long stretch of stunned betrayal, Hal coughs out a sardonic laugh. "That bad, huh?"

"Yes," Tom confirms, dead serious. His eyes raise slightly from the wooden panels of his desk, just enough to see his oldest son faltering at the sincerity of this immediate response.

Matt's voice cracks a little when he speaks again, his young and developing baritone struggling around the heavy weight of hurt coloring every word. "You're not going to tell us?"

God, it hurts to keep this from them. But he doesn't know how to face this, not --

"Not right now."

His children are quiet for a few more moments, then Hal gusts out an irritable sigh and wheels himself around to face the door and wait for one of his brothers to open it so he can coast through. "Fine. You know where to find us when you feel like being honest."

The bitter edge to his words grates in Tom's ears and travels straight down his throat to throb in his aching chest. _I am such a coward,_ he thinks, closing his eyes and waiting until the sound of the door closing behind his three sons echoes through the room. At the click of the latch, he buries his face into his hands with a quiet groan.

"...it's Pope, isn't it?"

Tom sucks in a sharp breath and snaps his head up to stare at the young man still standing across from him. Ben had decided to delay this conversation until it was just the two of them, apparently.

He sucks the back of his teeth for a long moment, then quietly evades the truth one last time. "What makes you say that?"

Ben delivers a fantastically deadpan glare at his father, as if to say _are we really doing this right now?_   Then he smirks ruefully and taps at one ear. "I can, um, hear your heartbeat."

Well. That is...unsettling news, but Tom isn't quite sure how that relates to --

"It speeds up when you talk to him. Or look at him."

Oh.

"...you've been looking at him _a lot."_

Tom sighs heavily, and finally gives up. "Have I really been that obvious?"

Ben hums a thoughtful note at the back of his throat, considering, then shrugs a little. "For me? Sure. For Hal, Matt, and everyone else? ....mmm, not really. I think Weaver is a little suspicious, and Pope has _definitely_ noticed something's up, but no one else has really been paying much attention what with everything else going on."

That's...not comforting, exactly, but better than Tom had hoped for. He glances up at the windows of his office to check for people walking by, and then surreptitiously slides his left sleeve down, bearing the soulname to his son in silent admission of the truth. (He still can't bring himself to say it out loud.)

Ben inhales sharply at the sight, his cerulean eyes widening for a brief moment, and then he quirks a lopsided smile at his father.

"I can kind of see it, you know? In a weird sort of way, it actually makes sense."

Only the last two decades of parenting keeps Tom from blurting _"are you **nuts**?"_ at his child. He settles instead for raising his eyebrows in disbelief as high as they can physically move on his face.

Ben is, absurdly, grinning at him. "Think about it, Dad. It's always been really...  _intense_ between the two of you. Half the time you act like you're going to kill each other, but you've stuck up for him more than once when everyone else wanted to kick him out of the city or the 2nd Mass, and he's been...well, not exactly _loyal_ , but he's helped us out a hell of a lot for a guy who supposedly only cares about himself."

Tom abruptly recalls one of the first conversations he ever had with Maggie, shortly after she betrayed Pope's gang and helped them use the man's own guns against him in a firefight. He'd been trying to gauge the likelihood of successfully integrating Pope into their ragtag army of survivors, or whether the man would blow someone's face off out of sheer spite if they handed him a weapon.

 _"He's not a good man, Mr. Mason,"_ she had said, cocking her head in a quietly thoughtful way. _"....but he's not a bad one, either. He chose to save me from the assholes in his gang, and he didn't have to. There was nothing in it for him. But he did anyway."_

"I...guess you're right," Tom finally concedes. He still isn't quite sure how he feels about the name on his arm, but at least it doesn't seem as horrible (impossible) as it did before. "Thanks, Ben."

His son flushes a little and ducks his head, making him look heart-breakingly young - way too young for what the Espheni have done to him.

"Sure thing, Dad."

Ben turns to walk out of the room, and then pauses at the door without opening it. "Just..."

"Hm?"

"Do me a favor." Ben glances over one shoulder at his father, his eyes sparkling with mischief. "Don't ever kiss him in front of me."

Tom's outraged shout of his son's name echoes down the corridor as Ben opens the door and darts away, laughing loudly as he flees.


End file.
